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"Ed has designed our new school... he is wonderful in how he involves a variety of people in the process, and knows how to stand back and empower groups of people to formulate their ideas... obviously I am in love with the work he did for my school." Andrew
Wooden, Headmaster |
  
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ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO As architects we are aware of the importance of the educational setting to the overall well-being of children. Many school buildings are housed under a single roof with one entrance and endless corridors; they are difficult for children to understand and navigate, are difficult to use, provide little natural light, isolate students and teachers from the natural environment and are expensive to maintain. Bosque School, with its environmental focus and innovative approach to education, allowed us to take a fresh look at school design. The school's environmental education focus is reflected in both site planning and building designs. The buildings are located along the edge of the Bosque to encourage student interaction with their environment. We incorporated water harvesting strategies, wetlands and indoor and outdoor classrooms that orient to the Bosque, to foster an awareness of the school's riverside setting. Materials and colors were selected so that the campus would blend into the shadows of the Bosque when viewed from surrounding neighborhoods. We daylit, passive solar heated and cooled all the buildings to reduce energy and resource consumption and lower school operating expenses. To address the school's goal for more interactive learning, we designed the campus as a group of small buildings, closely arranged in a composition to form a plaza, paths, courtyards and outdoor class rooms. The protected outdoor places provide opportunities for informal meetings between students and faculty, as well as accommodate formal school functions and classes. Each building contains classrooms of different shapes and volumes that students can identify with. We clustered the classrooms around common indoor and outdoor spaces and galleries to encourage casual student interaction and socialization. In addition, the building's materials and systems were deliberately exposed to function as teaching/learning tools. |